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Adrian Boulding, director of policy at NOW: Pensions, said: "One of the key findings of the recent Cridland Review was that while the new State Pension will deliver equally for both men and women, it's occupational pensions that are leading to men enjoying higher total pension income than women.

"As it stands, auto enrolment is doing nothing to redress this balance.

"To end this covert sexual discrimination, government need to act now removing qualifying earnings from the auto enrolment calculation and revisiting the appropriateness of the trigger when it undertakes its review of auto enrolment in 2017."

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Pension experts are calling on the Government to abolish the trigger next year

More than three quarters (77 per cent) of employees earning less than the auto enrolment trigger are women.

Also, just over half of part-time workers earn less than the auto enrolment trigger and 81 per cent of part-time workers are women, according to the Pensions Policy Institute report commissioned by workplace pension provider NOW: Pensions.

The research highlights how removing the £10,000 trigger and basing contributions on every pound of earnings could improve outcomes for all workers by thousands of pounds and would be particularly advantageous for women.

"Millions of people are missing out on the opportunity to build a healthy retirement pot because of the current £10k earnings trigger.

"Abolishing the trigger wouldn't sit well with employers because of the extra pensions burden and the administration involved.

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The uplift is greater for a woman who takes a break from the age of 26 to 32 to look after children

"But it would be great news for those employees, and predominantly female employees, who don't qualify for automatic enrolment.

"Women are discriminated against by the system because they are more likely to work part-time, and are more likely than men to work in low-paid jobs.

"Auto-enrolment should be available for all.

"It was hailed a success for making more people save for old age. But the current threshold means that many hard-working people can't save for retirement even if they wanted to."

Auto enrolment minimum contributions stipulate that the first £5,824 of an employee's earnings does not count for the purposes of auto enrolment and anything above £43,000 is not included either.

The PPI's research found a full time worker earning the national living wage of £7.20 an hour and making auto enrolment minimum contributions can expect a pension pot of £33,100 at retirement.

But, if contributions were made on every pound of earnings their pot would increase by 87 per cent and total £62,200.

For a woman who takes a break from the age of 26 to 32 to look after children then works part time until 54 before going back to work full time, the uplift is greater.

If contributions were made on every pound of salary then their pension pot would increase from £11,400 to £21,400 - an 86 per cent increase.

However, this would increase even further to £33,200 if the auto enrolment trigger were removed, a 190 per cent increase on the current situation.

Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC said: "Automatic enrolment has been a great policy success. It has ensured that millions of people have pensions with employer contributions for the first time.

A new research says the current auto-enrolment legislation is ‘covert sexual discrimination’

"The government's review of automatic enrolment due next year needs to ensure that all workers have the opportunity to build savings for retirement."

A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said: "The lower threshold level for automatic enrolment prevents people on low incomes from paying pension contributions they may not be able to afford.

"Instead, anyone earning between £5,800 and £10,000 can choose to opt in, and anyone can boost their retirement income by claiming Pension Credit, if they receive less than £155 a week."

Official data shows that before automatic enrolment began, 65 per cent of women employed full-time in the private sector did not have a workplace pension. Last year this dropped to 35 per cent.